INTERNET
Outlook gains 60m users
Microsoft Corp said its free Outlook.com Web-based e-mail service has gained 60 million active users in its first six months, with a third of those switching from Google Inc’s Gmail. Microsoft had expected it to take a year to reach that level of usage and it took Gmail two years to get there, Dharmesh Mehta, a senior director for Outlook.com, said in an interview. A third of active users are Gmail customers now using Outlook.com as their primary free e-mail account, he said. While free e-mail is not a huge money-maker — Mehta said Outlook.com carries about 60 percent fewer advertisements than Microsoft’s previous Hotmail product — the Redmond, Washington-based company considers it critical to gaining and retaining consumers.
FOOD AND BEVERAGE
Danone sales rise 4.9%
Danone, the owner of Evian bottled water and Activia yogurt, rose the most in almost three years in Paris trading after fourth-quarter sales beat estimates and the company announced plans to cut 900 jobs in Europe. Like-for-like sales increased 4.9 percent in the fourth quarter, exceeding analyst estimates of a 3.7 percent gain. The performance helped ease concern over weakening demand for dairy products in southern Europe as consumers shift to cheaper private-label alternatives. Danone, which gets more than half its sales from dairy products, said it would cut management and administrative positions across Europe as part of a plan to reduce costs by 200 million euros (US$267 million) over two years. The update “might indicate that we may be close to a turning point,” Societe Generale analyst Warren Ackerman said in a note to clients. A 0.4 percent increase in dairy products sold was the main reason that sales beat estimates in the quarter, he said.
HOSPITALITY
InterContinental profit surges
InterContinental Hotels Group, the world’s biggest hotelier, posted an 11 percent rise in profit last year, underpinned by a strong US business and expansion in developing markets. The hotelier, home to the Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and InterContinental brands, yesterday reported an operating profit of US$614 million for last year, ahead of a US$605 million company supplied consensus estimate. Annual revenue rose 5 percent to US$1.84 billion, while the dividend rose 16 percent to US$0.64. Growth in global revenue per available room (RevPAR), a key hotel industry measure, grew 5.2 percent last year, with its core US market 6.3 percent ahead and China up 5.4 percent.
PHILIPPINES
Aquino rally boosts index
The world’s biggest equity bull market is propelling valuations to all-time highs as international investors pile into the country’s stocks in an endorsement of President Benigno Aquino III’s economic policies. The Stock Exchange Index climbed 13 percent this year through yesterday, bringing gains since October 2008 to 285 percent, at least 124 percentage points more than every other bull market in emerging and developed nations, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The index turned into Asia’s most expensive from the second-cheapest four years ago, as rallies in Ayala Land Inc and Bank of the Philippine Islands lifted the gauge to 19 times estimated profits. Aquino’s efforts to boost spending on government projects and tackle corruption are convincing foreign investors to look past the nation’s speculative-grade credit rating and focus on the third-fastest growth in Asia after China and Thailand.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the